1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates in general to an image forming device, and more particularly, to a pre-heating system usable with an image forming device based on a behavior profile of a user, and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a copying machine or a laser beam printer is an image forming device where a rotating charge roller at high pressure uniformly charges a peripheral surface of a photoconductor drum, and a laser scanning unit (LSU) scans the surface of the photoconductor drum to form an electrostatic latent image.
A developing roller to which a toner is transferred from a toner supplying roller attaches the toner on the surface of the photoconductor drum where the electrostatic latent image is formed, and develops a toner image.
A transfer voltage is applied between a transfer roller and the photoconductor drum, and the toner image is transferred onto a sheet of paper passing between the transfer roller and the photoconductor drum.
Then, the paper with the transferred toner image thereon passes through a fixing unit equipped with a heat roller and a pressure roller. At this time, the heat roller and the pressure roller apply heat and pressure to the toner image on the paper, thermally fusing the transferred toner temporarily and pressing the paper. As a result, the toner image is fixed onto the paper. In addition, a thermistor sensing a temperature of the heat roller is in contact with a surface of the heat roller and measures the temperature of the heat roller according to time, so that the heat roller can maintain a certain temperature at all times.
A typically used heat source for the fixing unit is a halogen lamp mounted inside the heat roller, or the heated roller itself is used to raise the surface temperature thereof to a predetermined level.
Therefore, to fix the toner (or the toner image) onto the paper, the heat roller should be warmed up to a predetermined temperature by heat that is generated from the heat source. That is, for a printer to print something on a sheet of paper, a pre-heating process should precede the printing.
Normally the pre-heating process takes a certain amount of time. Therefore, even though a user turns on the printer and pushes the print button, the printer cannot perform the printing process until the heat roller of the printer is warmed up to the predetermined temperature. Consequently, printing is delayed.
To prevent an unnecessary delay in printing, the heat roller of the printer could be preheated regardless of the printing process and kept at a designated temperature at all times. However, this is a waste of resources and is not very economical.